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LONDON, Ont. — It could be the plot of a chilling Alfred Hitchcock movie — the comatose patient who understands everything going on around him.

Western University brain researchers have used a film made by the master of suspense to help unravel the mystery of human consciousness and measure just how much comatose patients know.

Their findings, released Monday, have broad-reaching implications for future studies and treatment of people in vegetative states.

"These findings are really striking, even for me as a researcher," said Lorina Naci, a post-doctoral fellow with Western’s Brain and Mind Institute.

Using highly sophisticated brain scans, researchers were able to show that a man who has been unresponsive and in a coma for 16 years was able to follow and understand the plot of a Hitchcock flick.

"It tells us that this patient is understanding real life events happening in front of him," Naci said. "To us, it means that a patient who is unresponsive has high levels of consciousness."

Dr. Adrian Owen and Dr. Lorina Naci of Western University’s Brain and Mind Institute pose in front of a scene from an an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in London, Ontario on Sept. 15, 2014. (DEREK RUTTAN/QMI AGENCY)

They showed the same flick to a Canadian man who has been in a vegetative state for 16 years.

His brain activity while watching the movie was similar to that of the healthy patients.

The findings offer remarkable insight into patients previously thought to have no understanding of the world around them and stir up questions about how such patients are treated.

The research also has wider implications about unresponsive patients being taken off life-support.

"(This research) doesn’t get old. I never know what a patient will know just by looking at them," Naci said.

The findings, by Naci and Western colleagues Rhodri Cussack, Mimma Anello and Adrian Owen, were published Monday in the journal, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., titled A common neural code for similar conscious experiences in different individuals.